The Georgetown Metropolitan

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Proposed city budget would end free Circulator rides and put $500,000 towards a transportation study for Georgetown.
• Keep your eye out this week for a great tennis player grabbing baked goods.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM is exploring a long gone boathouse. The image above is from the Daily Graphic Newspaper out of New York from June 19, 1874. It is of the Potomac Boat Club.

The Potomac Boat Club (or PBC) was founded as a rowing club in the middle of the 19th century. Some sources, including Wikipedia, peg the club’s founding to 1859. But according to the club’s own history, what was founded in 1859 was somewhat of a precursor organization known as the Potomac Barge Club. PBC itself was formed July 6, 1869.

PBC built a small boathouse at the foot of Congress St. (which is now 31st St.) This structure was soon replaced with the structure seen above. Here is another sketch of the building from 1870:

This boathouse was replaced on the same spot in 1875 by this stunning building:

According to contemporary news accounts this new boathouse was:

a model of its kind in America, and even today is the envy of many of the rich clubs of the North….[it housed] seventy-three private crafts, thirty-three of which are the beautiful canoes that are now so popular on the river.

The last bit about canoes reflects the canoe-craze of the late 19th century. In fact, a group of PBC members broke away to help form the Washington Canoe Club in 1908 to pursue that interest.

While this boathouse was beautiful, as you can see from the photo, the location wasn’t. Industry surrounded the boathouse on both sides:

This situation may hep explain why the club was looking for a new home 30 years later. It settled on a lot just east of the aqueduct bridge:

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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Designs for the improvement of Water St. are 90% done and construction is expected this fall.
• GU announces a new dean of the college.

Here we go again…

As Covid numbers bounce back up across the country and here in DC, you may be wondering, what about Georgetown? So far, not bad. But there’s still some reason to worry.

According to the fantastic DCCovid.com site, Georgetown has largely avoided the alarming spike that DC is experiencing. DC tracks Covid data by neighborhood, and splits Georgetown into two areas: Georgetown (which is basically west Georgetown) and East Georgetown (which also includes a chunk of west Dupont).

West Georgetown has only reported two positive cases in the month of July. For reference, in February it reported over 100 positive cases.

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News is still a bit slow these days, so GM is still working through his old Seven Georgetown series. Enjoy:

This week for Seven Georgetowns, GM will tackle the second of the two districts that he has actually lived in: Georgetown Heights.

For those just tuning in, GM recently posited that Georgetown as a total neighborhood can be broken up into seven distinct “sub-neighborhoods”.  And further, he argues that each of these districts has a distinct identity and can stand on its own as offering a great deal, even when ignoring the rest of Georgetown around it.

Georgetown Heights is the name GM is ascribing to the northeast part of Georgetown. Although it should be said that Georgetown Heights was a name that was occasionally used in the past to describe this part of Georgetown.

For GM’s purposes he is limiting it mostly to the area north of Q St., between 28th St. and 32nd. He also includes the three blocks south of Q St. between 29th and 32nd (although that is slightly debatable). Additionally, he includes the area north of R St. from 32nd to just east of the library.

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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• One woman’s valiant effort to map as many people’s experience with Georgetown as possible.
• If you, like GM, have noticed that a lot of oak trees are all of the sudden covered in clusters of dead leaves, have no fear: it’s from the cicadas and it’s not harmful.